Quote Of The Year

Timeless Quotes - Sadly The Late Paul Shetler - "Its not Your Health Record it's a Government Record Of Your Health Information"

or

H. L. Mencken - "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."

Saturday, November 27, 2010

The Summit is in Three Days and Still No Serious Documentation or Clarity. What a Farce!

I had a bit of a browse late Saturday afternoon.

News Item 1.

Well it’s a sell out!

Read here:

“Registrations are now closed. There are no further positions available.

For further information about the National e-health Conference please contact Conference Management:

Email: events@eventplanet.com.au

Link here:

http://www.ehealthconference.gov.au/registration.asp

More browsing shows:

Under the workshops tab we now are given information about the workshops.

----- Begin Extract.

Workshop Sessions Day 1

Conference workshop sessions will provide an opportunity for stakeholder groups to share their perspectives about the design and implementation planning for the PCEHR system. These sessions are part of the ongoing dialogue critical to the successful development and introduction of e-health in Australia.

There will be five separate workshops. At each, the same key themes will be discussed by a cross-section of stakeholder representatives drawn from consumers, healthcare providers, industry and government representatives.

Audience participation will be sought in each workshop, which will run for 75 minutes.

Workshop 1 – Where are we? Opportunities afforded by the PCEHR system

Panel members will discuss what they understand from their stakeholder perspective to be the key questions that need discussion as part of the implementation planning for the PCEHR system. Additionally, participants will be invited to discuss themes including privacy, consent, governance, scope and sustainability.

Workshop 2 – Making the PCEHR system work: Opportunities and Actions

Building on the first workshop, panelists will present their views about what is needed to “get down to business” so that people can begin using the PCEHR system from July 2012. Participants will be invited to discuss practicalities such as possible systems that may be ready to connect, data sources that can be used, legislation questions and change management frameworks.

Innovation Project Breakout Sessions Day 2

Innovative projects showcase

These sessions will showcase what is already happening in e-health in pockets across Australia, With a focus on online technologies, these innovative projects will demonstrate how e-health is already delivering benefits across the health care sector. Demonstrations will include embedded video footage of live scenario case studies. Participants will be involved in discussions focusing implementation practicalities and lessons to be shared.

----- End Extract

The information is found here.

http://www.ehealthconference.gov.au/streams.asp

As an exercise in vagueness the workshop descriptions rise to amazingly high levels!

And interestingly at least we now know that there will be a webcast!

Just click on the Webcast Tab that appeared yesterday.

The key sessions to watch will be Tuesday Morning when the luminaries presenting will tell us what the PCEHR is so it can be workshopped for 3 hours in the afternoon.

You can imagine just how much progress will be made with that!

What an amazing bit of nonsense this seems to be turning into.

I was told recently that no real technical capabilities or insight are required at the conference as it is all ‘high level’ and that the attendees have been selected on that basis. I note also some serious specialist journalists have seemingly been overlooked.

The time is quickly coming for those with serious intent to make it clear to Government that things must change and fast or we will be even more of an international laughing stock that we presently are if that is possible!

David.

2 comments:

Achilles said...

One of the really sad things about this conference is that, in the eyes of the government, eHealth=PCEHR. Many of the people who ought to know regard any sort of "personally controlled" record as a bit of a nonsense, and nearly everyone agrees that there are many other areas of ehealth which will potentially deliver far greater benefits. This has all been well and truly aired before, but it is sad to see that our health "leaders" learn nothing, and are doomed to keep on repeating the same mistakes.

Tom Bowden said...

I am hopeful that this conference will deliver some value, though until it is over, we cannot be sure what form that value will take. In a relatively large multi-jurisdictional country such as Australia it is especially important to get key stake-holders together periodically, and give them an opportunity to exchange their views.

Looking around the world, it appears that creating a successful a balance between top-down and bottom-up approaches to e=Health is a lot harder than it looks.

Lets hope we make some more progress this week.